View From The Top: New Construction At Cnu Overlooks Peninsula

NEWPORT NEWS — The cupola on top of the expanding library at CNU is both an instant landmark and a statement about the university.

It stands tall, it looks tall, and after you've climbed the more than a dozen flights of scaffolding from the ground floor to its top, it sure feels tall.

It's the towering cupola atop the Captain John Smith Library expansion, under construction at Christopher Newport University. When the structure was placed atop the building early this year it became an instant landmark, dominating the campus and the view from nearby Warwick Boulevard.

"This is the largest one in the area," said Chris Kyrus, construction supervisor for W.M. Jordan, the building contractor.

That's for certain. The cupola itself is 70 feet tall, more than doubling the height of the building. Its top stands 130 feet from the ground -- 142 feet, if you count the spire sticking up on top.

During a climb up to the top, Kyrus explained how the tower is put together.

It's built on a steel frame that weighs 50 tons. The exterior skin is one-eighth-inch aluminum, topped with a copper dome. The aluminum sections are connected with a caulking compound that's "guaranteed for at least 50 years," Kyrus said, and have a durable Kynar powder coating instead of a paint job.

Good plan. Climbing way up here someday to repaint or recaulk is not a job you'd look forward to.

The cupola is designed to be hurricane-proof, too. "All the connections float," Kyrus said. "As the wind presses up against it, they move."

The view from the top is impressive as well. You can see pretty much across the entire Peninsula, with a few of the taller landmarks -- the Omni hotel at Oyster Point, the Windward Towers condos, for example -- sticking up above the treetops.

But the view of the cupola, not from it, is what counts the most.

Putting cupolas atop college libraries and other buildings of note is a tradition going back to the Georgian and Georgian Revival architectural periods, a neoclassical style that echoes both the early United States and classical antiquity. So said Tom Kerns, the library's principal designer, from the architectural firm of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott.

"It marks the intellectual center of a campus," Kerns said, on the phone from Boston. "A library is often found in the center of a campus."

A central cupola or tower "gives some organization and structure to the overall view," and it provides a landmark that orients the observer, he explained. "It's a way of understanding where you are."

The tower has no practical use in the mundane sense. According to building supervisor Kyrus, the only things inside it will be lighting and a stairway for maintenance access.

But it serves a powerful visual purpose, said architect Kerns. That is why the tower must be tall enough to be readily seen -- not just on campus, but beyond.

"It's putting the campus in the larger context of the town, the region," Kerns said. "It says this campus is making a significant contribution to the community."

That, he said, embodies CNU's vision of itself. "(President Paul) Trible is committed to making Christopher Newport the premier public liberal arts college in the region."

Below the cupola, the library's new central section looks like it'll be pretty impressive, too. Taking shape is a large central room on the ground floor with a second-floor mezzanine around it. Above this central room and beneath the cupola, a tall interior dome will rise.

"The building is composed of six or seven composite structures, added over time," he said. "We had to demolish two of them." Other portions of the existing building are having their roofs raised or otherwise being altered.

The $23.7 million project will double the size of CNU's library. It's part of the latest spate of construction at the fast-growing university, including a new student center and expansion of Gosnold Hall, an academic building.

The new section of the library is expected to be completed by next summer, according to Carolyn Cuthrell, CNU's public relations director. The renovations to the existing library should be complete by fall 2007.

The expanded library's features will include wireless computer access, a cafe, a 24-hour study lounge, classrooms and increased circulation, stacks and reference services.

And a towering cupola that, the university hopes, will give Christopher Newport a visual personality, as such structures have done for other colleges. One thinks of the tall bell tower of Hampton University's Memorial Chapel, or James Madison University's cupola-topped Wilson Hall.

(The JMU cupola, by the way, comes with an eerie legend. The myth is that a student dumped by her professor boyfriend hanged herself in the cupola decades ago, and on some nights you can see her ghost dangling there. JMU says it never happened.)

"When the (CNU) tower is completed, I hope it's going to have a beautiful soft glow," said architect Kerns. "This is not going to be a bright beacon trying to overwhelm."

Still, he said, "It's not to be lost in the trees. It needs to soar." *

MULTIPLE CUPOLAS AROUND

A cupola is a domelike structure on a roof. There are others in the area besides the one at Christopher Newport University, but that one is the largest around, according to Chris Kyrus. Some cupolas compared with CNU's: